Kooky video full of life hacks using binder clips! Office supplies will save your life! Or at least make it more convenient.
(Huge shoutout out to DameEmma from my Secret Society of Enablers for pointing me to this video. Totally blew my mind.)
Ask The Desk: Good (and Pretty) Stationery
Cialina asked (me way back in October):
Hello! Holiday season is coming up and I’m looking for fountain pen-friendly stationery to gift to my friends. I’m looking for more than just blank writing tablets like Clairefontaine and more in line with Rifle Paper Co products. Any ideas? Thanks!
This is a question that frequently comes up. Folks are often looking for good quality stationery (emphasis on GOOD paper for fountain pens) but also pretty designs. While there are several good options that are plain paper like Clairefontaine, G. Lalo or Original Crown Mill, or even Rhodia Pads they are not very “fancy”. No flowers, dots, stripes, or embellishments that capture the sender’s joie de vivre. But the paper quality is excellent. I recommend having some on hand for second sheets, and for those occasions when you might not want to use floral, funky or Hello Kitty stationery. Goulet Pens and JetPens are good sources for these.
My first instinct is to go to the tried-and-true stationers like Crane (who also produces William Arthur and Vera Wang stationery), Kate Spade, other high-end producers of stationery goods. I don’t have the budget to personally test out each and every brand but I was able to establish that Crane uses 100% cotton paper which is tree-free, obviously, and considered quite upscale. Cotton paper will be a bit more absorbent than cardstock notecards but overall, Crane has been making paper for handwritten correspondence for over a century. You can buy some of their pre-printed designs or have a monogram or custom design printed. Very posh indeed.
Then, there are a few stationery shops that I basically have to hide my credit cards before entering because I will spend all my money. One of those places is Greer Chicago. The amazing proprietress and her staff stock such an assortment of paper goods as to make a grown woman weep with joy. Greer stocks lots of options for notecards and folded cards. Unfortunately, there are still not a lot of letter sheet stationery options on the market. Greer does offers the Rifle Paper Monarch Set with paper and matching envelopes for $29. Its listed as heavyweight paper and, while I cannot attest to the fountain pen friendliness, it is so beautiful, I’d be willing to take a chance on it.
Finally, here’s an assortment of some posh but not necessarily fountain pen friendly stationery options that I’ve found. Most of this is small batch printing, so the paper quality is probably much higher than most. It’s largely letterpress printed as well so they usually use fairly heavyweight stocks which will increase your odds of paper that will play well with fountain pens. Either way, they are super cute and non-seasonal and would be perfect to have a stack handy for dashing off your next letter or note.
- Write_On Hello! Lucky Bird Stationery Kit $26.95 (via Paper Source)
- Social Preparedness Kit TUBES WRITE-ON-ELOPES $18 (via Egg Press)
- Violet Floral Set of 12 flat notes and envenlopes $18.70 (via Rifle Paper Co.)
- WRITE ON notecards Set of 6 for $14 (via Hello Lucky)
- STRING THEORY box set of 20 note cards and pattern-lined envelopes $8.25 (via Elum)
Fashionable Friday: The Little Black Bag
This week, I asked three of my friends to pick out their dream “little black bag” because every girl needs to have the perfect “little black bag” in her closet. I knew each friend would pick unique bags, and boy, did they! Then I filled their bags with just the right notebook, pen and accessories.
Lisa picked the Clare V Lou Crossbody Bag ($399) from Anthropologie in black leather and suede with a blue denim lining and that fabulous gold gold strap detail. Lisa is a free spirit, creative and fun so I made sure her accessories reflected her personality. Sure, the ink matches her bag but its sparkly! I added some of my favorite brand of lipstick in a totally wearble color and some of the best pencils and notebook (also shiny!) and some fun clips to keep it altogether.
- TWSBI Eco black fountain pen €35 (via Fontoplumo)
- Diamine Shimmering Fountain Pen Ink in Golden Sands $20 (via JetPens)
- 1963 Portrait Pink Lipstick $22 (via Besame Cosmetics)
- Leuchtturm Medium Plain Hardcover Notebook in Gold (Limitied Edition) $18.95 (via Amazon)
- Palomino Blackwing Pencils $21.95 per dozen (via Pencils.com)
- Midori Strawberry D-Clips £5.99 (via The Journal Shop)
Angela chose the posh Gucci 1970 bag in black with gold tassel and accents to the tune of $2190 retail. Its off-season now so the best source for this bag is eBay. It was also available in other colors and was spotted on all the celebrity It Girls. I kept all her accessories as upscale and tasteful as the bag itself, except maybe the Daschund clips because everyone deserves to show they have a sense of whimsy.
- Montegrappa Ducal Fountain in Black with Rosegold Trim, Fine Nib
$350see website for price info (via Anderson Pens) - Rifle Paper Co. Garance Dore “Oui” Plain Pocket Notebooks, Set of 2 (14x11cm) $18.95AU (via Notemaker)
- Midori Dachshund D-Clips Paper Clips Mini Box of 12 $5.50 (via JetPens)
- Clinique Almost Lipstick in Black Honey $17 (via Sephora)
- Sailor Fountain Pen Jentle Ink in Black $17 (via JetPens)
Jordan, like a true designer said “does it have to be ALL black,” chose the Kate Spade Cedar Street Mini Nora $198 $138. Its pops of cream and hot pink meant the accessories had to coordinate and I already knew Jordan loved Kaweco pens so I tossed in a Lilliput. Jordan is also a nail polish connoisseur so I knew she’d be amused with the new OPI Hello Kitty polish collection but pleased that the polish was suitably subtle in creme black.
- Visconti Rembrandt Calligraphy Fountain Pen in Ivory $177 (via Pen Chalet)
- Leuchtturm1917 Medium A5 Dot Grid Notebook in Berry in Dot Grid $19.50 (via Goulet Pens)
- Karas Kustoms Fountain K Fountain Pen in Pink Aluminum $75 (via Goulet Pens)
- Diamine Fountain Pen Ink 30 ml mini bottle in Hope Pink $7.50 (via JetPens)
- Hello Kitty Never Have Too Mani Friends! Polish (via OPI)
- Kaweco Liliput Eco Brass Wave Fountain Pen with Extra Fine Nib $86.50 (via JetPens)
Kickstarter: RelayCon Atlanta 2016
It’s happening again! Brad and Myke are getting the gang back together for a live recording of The Pen Addict podcast in Atlanta at the pen show in April and they are letting me tag along again. Help support our efforts to be the nerdiest of all pen nerds and get a cool notebook, and an opportunity to pause the video while we make ridiculous faces (over and over) by backing the Kickstarter, RelayCon Atlanta 2016. The gift that keeps on gif-ing!
Back the project for just $10 to get the video, $15 to get the notebook (and spare yourself the silly video), $25 for both. Go crazy and back at $50 and get 3 sets of notebooks and the video.
And if you’ll be in Atlanta this year for the show, come be a part of our live studio audience! How weird is it to say that?
Ink Review: Diamine Meadow
I was recently reminded about Diamine Meadow (available in 2ml samples for $1.25 and 80ml bottles for $14.95) 30ml bottles for $7.50 and from my Secret Society of Enablers (you know who you are!). I’m lucky I know so many people who share my love of green. I had a sample of it in my stash from a Goulet Pens Ink Drop so I finally pulled it out to give it a good going over to determine if this was an ink worthy of a full bottle purchase, seeing as I already own many bottles of yellow-green ink. I have to be choosy about how many more lime green inks enter my house for fear of mojito overload.
I filled my Lamy Safari with 1.1mm stub/calligraphy nib and set forth to give this ink a thorough testing.
First, I did my watercolor brush painted lettering, to see the range of color and was pleased with the range of color. Meadow varies from a deep almost kelly green to a light lime depending on how much ink is applied.
Then I started my writing tests. It seemed like the color was coming out much darker than most people had described it. I kept thinking that maybe I had some fugitive color from poor cleaning and the more I wrote the lighter the color became. Yep. Fugitive color.
By the time I was halfway down the page, I am pretty confident I was getting the true color, consistent with both the color in the painted lettering and the swab. Its a bright, happy grassy green with lots of shading and it looks great in the wide 1.1mm nib. It does seem to dry a bit darker than when its wet … almost a little olive-y which is actually quite legible.
I was concerned about overall legibility so I switched out the 1.1mm nib to a F nib just to see for myself and the ink maintained both shading and legibility, at least with the European F nib. A Japanese F nib might lose some of the shading because it would be much finer but I think the color would stay dark enough to be usable unlike Pilot Iroshizuku Chiku-Rin which I sometimes find too light in very fine nibs to be useful.
Overall, I think Diamine Meadow strikes a nice balance between being a bright green and being a usable color. I love the hue of Chiku-Rin but there are instances where its just too light. Caran D’ache Delicate Green is kind of ridiculously expensive for how kelly green it is and Monblanc Daniel DeFoe is a little subdued, not to mention limited edition. So if you’re in the market for a good green ink, Diamine Meadow is a good candidate and a favorite among the green beans. I think its a keeper.
DISCLAIMER: This item was sent to me free of charge by Goulet Pens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
Link Love: Pen Horoscopes & Faber-Castell Love
Post of The Week: Pen Horoscopes (via That One Pen)
This is absolutely amusing but at present my horoscope options were not listed: either pencils case with dozens of pens and pencils OR micro-point felt-tip. What would my horoscope be?
Pens:
- TWSBI ECO Fountain Pen (via Pen Addict)
- Staedtler Triplus Roller, Fineliner and Color Pens (via Pens! Paper! Pencils!)
- Faber-Castell Basic Fountain Pen (via A Fool With A Pen)
- Faber-Castell CX Colour Ballpoint Pen (via Pens! Paper! Pencils!)
- Pilot Custom Heritage 92 (via Calligraphy Nut)
- Montblanc Moon Pearl LeGrand Fountain Pen (via Gourmet Pens)
- Danitrio Hakkaku Ancient Flower Midori-Dame Fountain Pen (via Unreal Warrant)
- Pilot Juice, Gel Ink, 0.38mm (via Pens and Junk)
- Kaweco Elite fountain pen (via United Inkdom)
- Sailor Sapporo (Pro Gear Slim) Starburst Galaxy – Music Nib (via Clicky Post)
- How to ruin a vintage pen in less than 2 hours (via Nibcreep)
- Pilot Vanishing Point Cherry Bamboo (via Office Supply Geek)
- Ateleia Brass Pen (The Finer Point)
Ink:
- Caran d’Ache Chromatic Ink Divine Pink (via Gourmet Pens)
- Lamy Coral (via Gorgeous.Ink)
- Private Reserve Naples Blue (via Alt.Haven)
- Pilot Iroshizuku Asa-Gao (via A Fool With A Pen)
- Montblanc Golden Yellow (via Independence)
- Diamine Shimmer Inks (via Pen Addict)
- Five Black Inks (via Gentleman Stationer)
Pencils:
- Pentel Orenz Mechanical Pencil (via Sparetime.today)
- Eberhard Faber Microtomic vs Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602, MythBusters Edition (via Pencil Revolution)
Notebooks & Paper:
- Video: Midori Traveler’s Notebook- How I Bullet Journal (via Seaweed Kisses)
- The Journal Diaries- Sandy’s Sketchbooks (via Seaweed Kisses)
Planners & Organizers:
- Video: Plan With Me: January 2016 Weekly Inkwell Press A5 Inserts in Filofax Domino (via Mary Heather B on YouTube)
- Week on 2 Pages PLUS [printable] (via Planner Fun)
- Organizing vs. Doing (via Well-Planned Life)
- The Planner Experience Link Up Party – Every Friday! (via Planner Fun)
- Weekly Blog Action Plan [printable] (via Planner Fun)
Post & Letter Writing:
- Month of Letters/InCoWriMo (via Letter Writers Alliance Blog)
- Pencils and Postcards (via From The Pen Cup)
- Who is Eduardo Munez? (via Letter Writers Alliance Blog)
Other Interesting Things:
- NYC Stationery Attractions (via Owl Ink)
- Spotlight Stationery Subscription Service (via Paper Pens Ink)
- Bag Review: Fjällräven Foldstack No.3 (via The Ink Smudge)
- Best Strange Podcast: How I found The Pen Addict (via Play Repeat)
- Show some love with these free digital wallpapers (via Think.Make.Share)
- Cold Weather Cocktails With Kate Spade New York (via Lauren Wells)
Books For The Desk Set: Letter Writing & Epistolary Books for InCoWriMo/LetterMo
Paris Letters
($5.25 for Kindle, $11.87 for paperback) by Janice MacLeod
Paris Letters is a travelogue/memoir with a bit of self-help thrown in for good measure. The book was pulled together from the author’s personal journals, blog and letters to become this short book about her journey from a disappointed 30-something copywriter to an expat living in Paris. She was influenced to start journaling by Julia Margaret Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and her morning pages ritual which is something quite familiar to me so I was intrigued to see where this lead MacLeod. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive on Amazon so the people who appreciated her tale. She has gone on to create illustrated travel letters that can be purchased on Etsy as well as a web site with a blog and more content. I read the book over a week that I was down with a cold and it was a light read. I enjoyed seeing her illustrated letters sprinkled throughout. While there was some romance in the overall story, this was definitely not about letters as a means for making a romantic connection.
The Art of the Handwritten Note: A Guide to Reclaiming Civilized Communication ($11.99 for Kindle, $14.04 for hardback, used copies can be found for much less) by Margaret Shepherd
This is one of many good books to help set someone, maybe even yourself, back on the path of writing notes and letters by hand. If you are a regular reader of this blog you are probably someone who writes letters or has considered it as something you might want to do anyway as an opportunity to practice your penmanship, try out your new inks or have yet another excuse to use all those pens in your collection. This book lays out simple reasons why handwritten notes and letters remain relevant today and include some tips for what to say (and what not to say) in some of the more formal occasions like thank you notes, condolence cards and apologies. This is not at all a manners book and does not include lengthy ways to format wedding invitations but rather wordings to make things clear and non-confrontational when writing to a landlord or writing a Dear John letter. It also has tips for improving your handwriting as the author is a known calligrapher. Its a small book and written in a conversational tone that makes it easy to read and a good jumping off point and the quotes peppered throughout are a nice touch.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Celebrating the Joys of Letter Writing ($11.99 for Kindle, $20.35 for hardback, used copies can be found for much less) by Nina Sankovitch
Signed,Sealed, Delivered was written by the author of Tolstoy and the Purple Chair is full of essays about letters. There’s a whole essay about how letters were used to prosecute kidnappers and killers, or not. There’s another essay about a woman who wrote a thank you letter to Edison for electricity. It’s just a pleasing book of stories with letters at the heart of each story and how could we not appreciate that?
The Art of the Personal Letter: A Guide to Connecting Through the Written Word ($11.99 for Kindle, $10.39 for hardback, used copies can be found for much less) by Margaret Shepherd
The Art of The Personal Letter is also by Margaret Shepherd who wrote The Art of the Handwritten Note. The Art of the Personal Letter includes some elements mentioned in The Art of the Handwritten Note but the Personal Letter definitely delves deeper into letter-writhing specifically. If you are looking for something to help keep your creative juices flowing through InCoWriMo/LetterMo, I would recommend picking up The Art of the Personal Letter rather the Handwritten Note as more of the content will be relevant to you. Personal Letter still includes info on materials and pens and handwriting repair but then the remainder of the content focuses on longer form letters rather than notes or other types of correspondence. I figure by week 3 of InCoWriMo, ideas for writing letters to the future and letters to my congressmen might be great ideas.
Good Mail Day: A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art ($9.99 for Kindle, $4.85 for paperback) by Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler
I cannot believe I have not written about this book before! This is one of my favorite sources for inspiration in making mail art, decorated envelope and epistolary adventures. I highly recommend buying the paper edition, especially at the low, low prices currently listed on Amazon. The paperback edition of the book includes stickers and templates and is in full color. Such a fun and funky resource for creating mail art. And I’m not just saying that because I know the authors!